Artistic licence

“The very rich are different from you and me,” F Scott Fitzgerald is supposed to have said to Ernest Hemingway. “Of course they are, you bloody fool,” Hemingway replied. “They have more money.” We’re supposed to think that Hemingway got the better of this little exchange, but I’ve always thought it was Fitzgerald who was on to something. After all, the very rich certainly are different from you and me, and in one particular way: very rich people think of the world as malleable.